What's In a Name
by Stormcrown201
Summary: Shepard teaches Garrus how to say her name.


That night back on the _Normandy_, hours after their trip to the top of the Presidium and shortly after they finish with their lovemaking, Garrus leans on his arm and watches her clean herself up. They won't be ready to go again anytime soon, but he likes to watch her, to observe how she stretches her legs and flexes slightly as she cleans herself and tends to the inevitable bruising and chafing that comes with what they do. Surely, he thinks, humans don't need to flex that much to get clean; the show must be for his benefit. If it is, he's not complaining.

When she's finished cleaning up, she tosses the cloth aside and lies back on the bed. Her hand drifts up to stroke the plating on his arm, and he watches her still, wishing she could hear in his subharmonics what she means to him, what this means to him, the more so since the rest of the galaxy's going to hell around them. Perhaps one day he'll work up the nerve to say to her what she said to him today, but for now, he hopes she knows. Or, perhaps, this is enough for the moment.

"Garrus," she says after a moment. His gaze shifts from her hand to her face. Her clear blue eyes, much lighter than any others he's ever seen on a human, stare right back at him.

"Shepard," he says. "What is it?"

Her mouth twitches, just briefly. She's not one for wide smiles, he knows, just for smirks and the occasional upward turn of the corner of her mouth. It doesn't matter to him. "Actually, it's about what you call me," she says, and his mandibles also twitch for a moment as he looks more closely at her, wondering what she means. She clarifies in the next instant. "I don't want you to call me Shepard."

Garrus blinks. Now there's an odd request if he ever heard one—though not so strange, he supposes when he thinks about it. Who calls their—girlfriend, and that word thrills down his spine like nothing else does—by her surname? That's a request he can comply with, he supposes. Except… "You want me to call you by your given name?" She nods once. "I can do that. The crew might find it odd, however."

She sits up, and he does the same. "True. Then you call me by my given name in private, and—"

"And Shepard in front of everyone else?" A sensible system, though no doubt he's bound to slip up in more ways than one. Garrus wonders what would happen if he did so in front of Victus, and a twinge of embarrassment shoots through him. He's received enough strange looks from the man whenever Shepard's been in the same room as them to last a lifetime, and he's not sure if he wants even more.

She shakes her head. "No. Not Shepard. That name is…" She exhales. "It means nothing to me."

He blinks again, and again, his mandibles twitch as he tries to comprehend that, with much less success than before. "Means nothing? Everyone and their mother have been calling you 'Shepard' for as long as I've known you—and probably even longer."

She nods, and a corner of her mouth briefly turns up. "I know," she says, and she brushes a stray hair out of her face as she does so. "I suppose this is how I'll go down in history, too. As 'Shepard'. But it's not my real name. You know I'm from Latvia originally. There aren't many of us in the Alliance, however, so when I joined up, I anglicised my first names and changed my surname. 'Shepard' was never my favourite name, but it was the best I could think of at the time. But though I've been 'Shepard' and haven't been back to Latvia for nearly half my life, it means nothing to me. Not like my original name."

Garrus listens, and when she's done, he nods slowly. That makes sense. "But is your original name even… well, your original name?" he asks after a moment.

"No idea," she admits bluntly. "That's just what I've been calling myself for as long as I can remember. Regardless, in the Alliance, I may be Julia Emily Shepard, but back home, I'm Jūlija Emīlija _Strazdiņa_. I can't say Strazdiņa is my favourite surname in the world, either, but it means something to me. 'Shepard' doesn't. It's just an alias, really, born out of necessity."

"Does Strazdiņa mean 'shepherd' in your language?" he asks, a sudden curiosity lacing his voice. She has spoken of her home nation before, always with pride, but this talk of her name is new.

She shakes her head again. "No. That's _gans_. Not much of a surname, if you ask me. Strazdiņa—Strazdiņš—comes from _strazds_. That refers to various kinds of birds—the common starling, the thrush. When I was anglicising my names, I didn't want to be known as Julia Starling—sounds nice, but too much potential for bad puns, given I was enlisting in the Alliance. I almost went with Thrush, but one of the higher-ups told me that has… unfortunate connotations in English."

"Connotations?" This is fascinating. "Like what?"

"Apparently, 'thrush' is also the common name for a vaginal yeast infection. Don't ask me why, it just is. Anyway—"

"A _yeast_ infection?"

She chuckles, presumably at the alarm in his voice. He'd had no idea that vaginas could be infected with yeast, of all things. "Like I said, don't ask. A lot of strange shit happens in our bodies, trust me."

Garrus shakes his head and decides that he won't look that up later. "You had to be told that?"

"At the time, I only spoke a few words of English," she says. "No formal education, remember? I barely knew how to _read_. And these days, my English is still shite. Most of the time, I just speak in Latvian and let the translator in everyone's omni-tools do the work. Another reason the name 'Shepard' means nothing to me. It's not who I am."

"But that's what everyone calls you."

She nods again, then abruptly gets up and moves away from the bed, going to the small cabinet of medals she keeps on her desk. Garrus watches her go. "I suppose I could say it's a way of getting away from my past, but that would be horseshit. Really, it's for convenience's sake only. If I had to listen to Americans and western Europeans, primarily, butchering my name, over and over again, I'd probably have been tossed out years ago for starting endless fights. I take pride in my name. Where I come from." She opens the cabinet and begins to dig around in it.

That also makes sense—is familiar to him. His people still mark their faces with the insignias of their homeworlds and take pride in them even though the Unification War is many centuries over. He watches her as she pulls out a medal and certificate and returns to him. She holds them out in her hands, and he gingerly takes them with his fingers and examines them.

The medal is a white cross, with two swords crossed and emerging from the small disc in the middle, on the obverse of which is the image of a man slaying a bear; on the reverse are inscribed the date '11. novembris 1919' and words '_Par Latviju_'. The certificate is written entirely in Latvian and is incomprehensible to him, inevitably, but he does see her name written on it in large font. It is her original name.

"To the galaxy, I'm 'Captain Shepard'," she says, sitting down next to him again. "To my nation, I'm 'Kapteinis Strazdiņa'. That means something, especially since I'm the biggest hero Latvia has produced since… God only knows when. Certainly I'm the most famous one since the 20th." There's a hint of pride in her voice when she says this, and Garrus can't blame her. All he knows of Latvia is that it is a tiny country somewhere in the continent of Europe. The people must surely take great pride and satisfaction in no less an esteemed figure than Captain Shepard being one of their own.

"Which medal is this?" he asks.

"The Order of Lāčplēsis, 2nd class," she says, with still greater pride. "Latvia's highest military decoration. Awarded to me after the Battle of the Citadel. If I can pull off defeating the Reapers, it'll probably get upgraded to 1st class. And for reference—that medal hasn't been awarded since 1928. The Latvian government hauled it out and allow me to skip 3rd class because they felt no other medal was sufficient for my accomplishments."

"Well, I'm glad _somebody_ out there appreciates everything you've done for the galaxy," he says as he hands the awards back to her, and she laughs, nods, and lays them on her bedside table. After doing so, she sits back on the bed and shuffles back until her back rests against the headboard.

"The point being," she says after a moment, "my Latvian name means something to me. 'Shepard' might be what the rest of the galaxy knows me as, but it means nothing. That's why I want you to call me Jūlija, not Julia, and Strazdiņa, not Shepard. I want to hear my _real_ name from your mouth, Garrus."

"Because it means something," he says, and she nods and lifts a hand to stroke his mandible. He bows his head slightly then, on impulse, leans in until their foreheads are touching. He nuzzles her affectionately. Something warm glows in his chest. Something like love. Perhaps one day he'll work up the nerve to say it back to her. Perhaps one day he'll say it in her native tongue. "You're not afraid I'll butcher it?"

She chuckles. "It won't be so bad, coming from your mouth," she says. "Besides, you've taught me the value of patience. Among many other things. Why don't we start with my surname?"

He nods, and as he pulls away slightly, he brushes his hand over hers. "I would like that," he says. Perhaps this will do for now: a name that means something to her in the place of one that means nothing; preparation for him saying the words she said to him just today. It's a start.

"Strazdiņa," she says again, more slowly this time. "'A' as in… wait a minute, does your language even have the same—uh—what do you call them—the same phonemes?"

Garrus chuckles. "Some of them, but do you really want to go over the hard linguistics right now?" She snorts and shakes her head. "Just keep sounding it out, and I'll see what I can do."

"Right. Strazdiņa. Straz—diņ—a. There's a 'yuh' sound before the final 'a', but it's faint. Wait, I've got it. 'A' and 'i' as in how you say them in your name," she says suddenly, and Garrus laughs again.

"Quite the coincidence," he says cheerily, and a stronger smile crosses her face as he sounds the word out. "Straz… diņ… ya."

"Almost," she says, and she sounds about as encouraging as she's ever been—perhaps more so. In days gone by, she played the part of an especially stern drill sergeant and was never one for pep talks. She could have given some of his instructors back at boot camp a run for their credits. Regardless. "The 'z' is shorter, almost an 's'. And the 'yuh' is much fainter than that."

He glances at her. "There must be regional differences. Accents, dialects, that sort of thing. Straz… diņ… a."

She inclines her head. "There are, but I spent my whole life before joining the Alliance in Riga. I didn't exactly get much exposure to Upper Latvian and Livonian. The middle dialect is what Standard Latvian is based on, anyway, so…"

"Fair enough. Straz… diņ… a. Strazdiņa."

She nods, looking more encouraging yet. Another small smile plays at the corner of her mouth, and there seems to be a spark in those bright blue eyes of hers. It warms the glow in his chest. "Better. That'll do for the moment, I think. As for my first name…"

"You said yoo_-_lee-ya," Garrus says, almost interrupting. His brow plate furrows slightly as he looks at her. "But the name on your certificate had two j's…?"

"Yeah. Basically, the sound 'juh' stands for a different letter entirely while 'j' represents 'yuh'. Common in a lot of European languages. If you want to know more, ask a linguist."

Garrus shakes his head. "Spirits. In _my_ language, the phonemes at least match the letters of the alphabet. Well, most of the time."

She chuckles. "Latvian isn't even the worst, trust me. Remind me to introduce you to Finnish and Icelandic sometime. Or, hell, even English. There's a reason my grasp of it is still limited. It's a right bastard of a language for someone who has a formal education to learn, never mind someone like me. Thank Christ for Galactic Standard… and omni-tools."

"And omni-tools, yes," Garrus says.

"Anyway," she says, getting them back to the point. "You got it the first time, mostly. The 'yoo' is longer, the 'lee' and 'ya' shorter, but there's _more_ of a 'ya' because of the 'j' in front of the 'a'. Like this: _yoo_-lee-ya. _Yoo_-lee-ya."

He sounds it out then, carefully. The sounds are soft, rather unfitting for someone like her (though Garrus naturally knows better than to say that out loud) and very much not what he's used to. Turian languages are almost as varied as those of any other race, but his is all hard sounds and sharpness. The vowels and the softer sounds so common to other languages don't appear as often. But Galactic Standard is more balanced, and he knows it well, and so the sounds come more easily to him than they might have otherwise. Besides, he has an additional incentive to get it right this time. She nods in places as he repeats it, which Garrus can only assume means he's on the right track.

"Jūlija," he says finally. "Jūlija Strazdiņa. How's that?"

This time, she doesn't smile, but grin, the way she did hours before as she said that she loved him. It warms the little glow inside him to the point where it seems more like a fire to him than anything else. "We'll keep working on it," she says, and there's a distinct note of excitement on her voice. Her hand creeps over to rest on top of his. "But that's a good start. Thank you, Garrus. This means a lot to me. And you know I don't usually place a high value on sentimental things."

He nuzzles her forehead again. "Any time," he says, and after a moment's hesitation, he adds, "Jūlija." Saying it directly to her, the word is strange in his mouth, but the way her grin only widens at the words makes it worth it. Musingly, he continues, "I could get used to that."

"I hope you _do_," she says. "It's… nice. Well, no, that's not quite the right word, but you know what I mean. Hearing something that means something to me coming from somebody's mouth, from your mouth, it's… er…" She looks at him, rather helplessly—she tends to get almost as tongue-tied as he in emotional situations, having spent most of her life with few emotions to speak of other than anger and cold determination—and he strokes her cheek carefully with a finger.

"I know what you mean," he says, and she leans into his chest, rubbing her forehead against the plating as if she's also trying to nuzzle. He leans back into the headboard and watches her, and again, his subharmonics buzz with all the words he wishes he could say and the feelings he wishes he could express to her.

Perhaps one day he'll be able to say it. Perhaps one day he'll be able to do so in her language, or maybe in his if she's learnt enough to comprehend it. Perhaps it can be something more to live for—_survive this war, and I will say I love you._ But for now, a name that means something. That's a start.


End file.
